Burak

One died in days. One I sold. One is growing. One I'm validating. Here's what actually happened 🧵

@conorsen reporters got paid for accuracy, creators get paid for retention, influencers get paid for trust at scale. becuase the incentives collapsed onto the same feed each role still optimizes for something the others ignore

Something a lot of us saw over the weekend raised a question that's probably worth exploring -- particularly as news organizations embrace short-form video, what differentiates a reporter from a content creator from an influencer?

@dramaricic the side project to escape part is wierd because it usually replaces the rat race with a new flavor of grind. whats the version that worked for the people you connected with, did most keep the day job or burn the boats

If you're working full time and still running side project to escape rat race, I want to connect with you.

@davidsenra @DavidBaszucki two years failing to find a ceo job is the part nobody talks about. left an ml job last year and underestimated alot how much identity gets tied to the title. baszuckis 40s comeback feels less like a fluke and more like the only path some people can stomach

Roblox founder @DavidBaszucki bootstrapped his first company to a $20 million exit, then spent two years failing to find a CEO job before building Roblox in his early 40s — no revenue, no investors, pure vision. Today, Roblox has over 150 million daily users, 13 billion hours of monthly engagement, and a virtual economy worth over $40 billion. Here’s our conversation: 0:00 Roblox Origin Story 1:14 Sabbatical and Intuition 3:36 Founder vs CEO Mindset 5:43 Building the Clock 7:57 Lifestyle Startup Phase 8:49 First Product Failure 15:48 Buying First Users 17:43 Studio Goes Live 18:53 Roblox vs YouTube 21:59 Beyond Games Vision 25:50 Roblox Operating System 33:55 Nine Companies Inside 36:19 Safety and Monetization 41:13 Robux Economy Loop 45:19 Creator to Entrepreneur 45:49 Chasing Photoreal Concurrency 49:11 Imaginary Competitor Mindset 50:08 Capital Efficiency Playbook 52:11 Performance As Growth 55:40 Owning The Stack 58:36 Roblox Infrastructure Engine 1:02:32 Safety And AI Moat 1:06:57 Data Ethics And NPC Testing 1:11:31 Creator Earnings Explosion 1:16:08 Marketplace And Transparency 1:20:01 Near Death Lessons 1:24:43 Ads And Creator Discovery 1:25:35 Closing Reflections Includes paid partnerships.

@khalidxv1 3% churn at 130 users is the part most people skip past. takes a real product to hold that. whats the habit hook keeping dau/mau at 45%, definately curious what makes them come back daily

Month 4 Calinfo update: MRR: $72 Users: 130 Churn: 3% DAU/MAU: 45% Next milestone: $500 MRR The path is slow. But it's clear. Building in public means committing to the long game. #buildinpublic #saas #indiedev

@knoxtwts the role expansion part hits hard. solo founders are quietly running 4 people worth of work and you can't always tell which hat pays the bills. half my week is wierd context switching between marketing brain and shipping brain

every solo saas founder just got a promotion. from "shipped an app" to "runs a 5-creator distribution team" here's how the role actually works this week: > open higgsfield marketing studio powered by hermes agent > upload 5 ai personas with face-locked avatars and consistent voices. that's your creator roster. > paste your website/app url > hermes scrapes meta ads library for the winning hooks in your exact saas category > seedance 2.0 renders 9 ad formats per persona with your dashboard held legibly in frame > 45 ad variants per generation cycle. your roster won't ghost, flake, or miss deadlines. running the role costs $39/mo. the old version cost $50k+/mo with an 8-person team. the solo founder running this for a month outships the entire creative department at their series-b competitor. same ceiling. no hires required. reply "ROSTER" and i'll send the 5-persona setup + the meta ads library search.

@andrewchen this matches what i saw exactly. the first 100 forced me to rewrite my onboarding becuase i could see them stuck in real time. once i hit a few hundred i lost that signal and had to rebuild it through analytics

the first 100 users teach you more than your next 10,000 The former is about PMF, the latter is GTM. And of course you can learn a ton about GTM, but it's a more tractable problem particularly b2b

@petergyang @tibo_maker the validate fast part is what i had to learn the hard way. spent months polishing somthing nobody asked for before realizing 30 min of customer calls would have saved me the whole quarter. tibo gets a lot of mileage out of that loop

"I shipped 9 failed products before one took off...now I'm doing $1M+/month." Here's my new episode with @tibo_maker, a solo founder who bootstrapped 5 AI products to $1M+ / month. Tibo walked me through his exact playbook: ✅ How to validate ideas and fail fast ✅ Why his top acquisition channel is still SEO ✅ The pricing sweet spot for AI products Some quotes from Tibo: "When people twist your product into something else, that's a very strong signal you have to follow." "It's easy to lie to yourself [with free users], but if there's no stickiness in the revenue, it's very hard to build a successful business." "I'm convinced right now that just one person can do the job of 20 people." 📌 Watch now: youtu.be/0UnZnonMN9o Thanks to our sponsors: @WisprFlow: Don't type, just speak ref.wisprflow.ai/peteryang @linear: The AI agent platform for modern teams linear.app/behind-the-cra…

@BrandGrowthOS @gregisenberg the wild part is nobody talks about this enough. shipping a product is like 10 percent of the work now. the other 90 is alot of unglamorous stuff like dm'ing strangers and begging for 15 min of their time. that part has not changed at all

@gregisenberg the prototype part is wild when you think about it. i can spin up an AI agent that handles customer service in like 3 hours. but getting those first 100 users? that's still the exact same grind

You know what fires me up? That this is the greatest time ever to build a company (thanks to AI). My first startup I built in college took 1.5 years to build the prototype. When I hit 100 users I was so happy i was literally in shock. Today, you can hack a product in 24 hours and wake up to 1000+ strangers already using it. You can post a stray thought, record a selfie vid and millions might see it. Words, code, distribution. It all feels like a giant multiplayer game. The rules are clear, the moves repeatable, the rewards compounding if you keep playing. Kinda feels like a treasure hunt. One post can change your career. One prototype can become a company. One company can snowball into a movement. All in a few clicks. You rack up points. Except now the points are customers, revenue, and freedom. It doesn't matter where you come from, what school you went to, what jobs you had. As long as you got fast internet, you can play. Startups used to be for the privileged and now they're for the persistent. And that fires me up. Maybe you too. Pretty amazing.

@reuben_santoso yeah the gap is real. everyone is racing to build static ui generators and no one is touching timing, easing, scene direction. good motion is a seperate skill and most tools still treat it as an afterthought

everyone is talking about the new claude design what I really need is video design tool to generate actually good motion graphics for videos

@mcruntime the unit economics thing hits for me. left an ml engineering job and now i track tool spend every month just to keep the burn honest. its a completley different game when the cost sheet only has you on it

The data on solo founders in 2026 is becoming hard to ignore. Bootstrapped, AI-tooled, one-person operations are hitting milestones that used to require a team of 5-10 and a $2M seed. The unit economics look different too: lower burn, higher founder equity, and often lower CAC because the founder is also the sales and marketing function. This isn't right for every business. It's right for more businesses than conventional startup wisdom would have suggested 3 years ago.

@rashiumapathi the cancellation email one is the sharpest point here. most people treat it as damage control but its the highest signal research you have. whats a question that beats 'why did you leave' becuase that one gets generic answers

7 free distribution channels every indie hacker ignores: 1. Reddit - Find the sub where your ICP vents. Answer genuinely. Link in bio. 2. Hacker News "Show HN" - One well-timed post = thousands of early users 3. Product Hunt - Still works if you prep 2 weeks before launch 4. GitHub README - If your tool has a repo, optimize it like a landing page 5. Niche newsletters - Guest post or pay for a mention. Cheaper than ads, warmer leads. 6. Twitter/X replies - Comment on posts from 10K+ accounts in your niche. Daily. 7 . Your own cancellation email - Ask every churned user why. Turn the pattern into content. Stop paying for ads before you've exhausted all of these. Save this for your next launch.

Claude has zero transparency. In the last 2 days, the token spending pace has increased at least twofold. They did not inform us about that. Even the max plan is enough to develop only half of the all times. I hope the new GPT model comes with good power so we can easily say goodbye to these guys.

@anupamrjp the gap between polished and people actually noticing is wierd. ship ugly that hits a nerve = signups. ship clean nobody feels = crickets. fit is weirder than we want it to be

I spent 5 months building a SaaS. Pixel-perfect UI. Clean backend. Automations everywhere. Hit launch. Traffic came. Signups didn’t. Ended with 11 users. Half were friends. DROP Building link 👇

@buildinpublic rewriting one feature that probaly should have been fine two iterations ago. user asked for something subtle and now the whole flow is different. good different though

What are you working on this week?

@YashHustle_22 all 4 but stagger them. cold dms get you the first 10 and force you to sharpen the pitch. building in public starts working around month 2 once you have alot to show. seo is the 6+ month bet. ads only after you know what converts

As a founder, what’s the best way to get your first 100 users? 1. Cold outreach / DMs 2. Building in public 3. Organic SEO / Content 4. Ads

@nic_detommaso the mailchimp number is wild. 100 percent ownership at a 12b exit is the dream but everyone forgets how long they ate ramen before getting there. wierd how we romanticize the endpoint and skip the 17 year middle part

Founding CEOs typically own around 15% of their VC-backed company at IPO. But it can vary widely. The Mailchimp founders, for example, bootstrapped and owned 100% of the company at exit when Intuit acquired them for $12 billion (!). While the DocuSign founder owned just 1.5% at IPO. Why does this matter? Founder equity throughout the startup journey is incredibly important. It ensures: - Strong incentives for founders to stay and build - Meaningful payout in the event of a successful exit At Series A, a good rule of thumb is that founders should still own at least 35%. If you sell too much equity too early, it can become a red flag for future investors. Your cap table could turn into a major hurdle. If you are going to raise money, you should know the types of fundraising rounds: 1. Priced Learn more: lnkd.in/gxi9MDKh 2. SAFE Learn more: lnkd.in/g_YD6pjR Knowing these can help you make informed decisions on how to structure your cap table. ⸻ Source: SaaStr ♻️ Repost to help a founder!

@goldmundchen @garrytan molecular diagnostics as a solo founder is kind of insane in the best way. what part of the stack did AI actually make tractable, the data pipelines or somthing more domain specific like variant calling?

@garrytan Relatable. Solo founder, shipping a molecular diagnostics platform in production. AI is the only reason this is remotely possible at this size.

I came back to code because AI made it possible for me to build at a level I couldn't before. I'm not coding despite being CEO of YC. I'm coding because this is the most important technological shift since the internet and I'd be an idiot to experience it from the bleachers. I'm 45, running the most important startup institution in the world, and I can ship production software at 2am. That's not a distraction from the job. That is the job understood correctly.

@koustubh018 0 to 1 is probaly the hardest jump in all of building. first sale feels more real than any chart or metric you been staring at for weeks. congrats. did they tell you what made them actually pull out the card

I swear today Claude Opus 4.7 has a 40 IQ level lower than it used to be.

@clar1k @polygamingxyz @colosseum @mxmnci @mrinko @SuperteamUKR @n8levine @toly this reads like a prayer and thats honestly the correct posture. embarassing how much of post launch founder life is just sitting at a dashboard willing one signup into existence. rooting for you

oh dear god of the arena i have built the product found the market talked to the users shipped the MVP i have done everything a founder can do now i ask for one thing let this be the moment bless this project @polygamingxyz